


Sounds Familiar

by eudaimon



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-11
Updated: 2009-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:13:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't have that much time together; they make the most of what they have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sounds Familiar

**Author's Note:**

> This is written for bzzinglikeneon, the Nate to my Brad, as it were who, a while ago, told me that Katie Melua’s version of Just Like Heaven was sort of perfect for our boys. This is what I did with that.

  
_Spinning on that dizzy edge_  
I kissed his face and kissed his head  
And dreamed of all the different ways I had  
To make him glow  
Why are you so far away? he said  
Why won't you ever know that I'm in love with you  
That I'm in love with you 

He had learned, by then, not to think about it in terms of ‘love’ or how much time they had left. He was a fucking Marine, best of the best, possessed of a proud warrior spirit, which didn’t save him from turning softer, somehow, when he woke up in a rumpled bed in San Diego with Nate Fick at his side and it dawned on him that the time left could be measured in hours, not days. In his career as a Marine, Brad was lucky to have never really needed the attentions of a Corpsman. His feet suffered like everyone else’s, rotted in his boots (at home, he almost never wore shoes inside the apartment), but he’d never been shot or blown up or burned. He had a scar on one side of his body from he’d fallen off of his first bike, another against his hair-line where a surfboard had caught him and he’d been lucky that his sister had been in the water with him. So many Marines paid rent in blood or so much skin. Brad had been to visit in hospitals and carefully not flinched away from healing skin-grafts. Brad was pretty much unmarked, which didn’t mean anything when you put him next to Nate Fick. In the dim light of the bedroom, the blinds still down, Nate’s skin almost seemed to glow.

That was just another thing that Brad was never going to say to Nate.

The apartment was dim and quiet, cool. He could already hear traffic on the street outside, the city getting going for the day. Oscar Mike. Nate stirred and turned the tip of his nose against his upper arm. His throat contracted with a swallow. Not for the first time, Brad wondered if Poke or Rudy or, hell, even Trombley, lay awake beside wives like this. He wondered if Ray watched his girlfriend (often talked about, never actually _named_ ). Brad didn’t like putting himself in the same bracket as those guys. It reminded him of the things that he’d had once. It reminded him of the things he was never going to get, here, now.

It didn’t help to think in terms of loss.  
It didn’t help to look at his watch and work out how many hours until he needs to drop Nate at the airport.

Tomorrow morning didn’t help.  
Better to think of it as one whole day, and a night too.

“What’re you doing?” mumbles Nate, reaching out for Brad with one hand, fingers curling against the side of Brad’s neck and tugging their foreheads close together. Noses touched but Brad shied away from actually kissing Nate. That shit was okay in movies but this was San Diego in the Springtime, and Brad was pretty sure that neither of them needed that.

“I was just getting up to brush my teeth.”  
“You’re a fucking liar, Brad Colbert.”

Brad shifts his weight, turning onto his side, the tip of his nose brushing against the tip of Nate’s. Nate leaned in and Brad twisted out of the way, teeth touching his lip.

“I really was about to brush my teeth, Nate,” he mumbled. Nate’s fingers tightened against the back of his neck.

“Man the fuck up and fucking kiss me, Colbert.”

What else was Brad going to do with that? He leaned in kissed Nate hard, and fuck brushing his teeth. Nate’s arm curled around his neck and Brad pushed against him and he wasn’t sure who started laughing first, but one of them did, their mouths still crushed together.

Nate’s hand slid down Brad’s side, squeezing hard above his hip.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”  
“Don’t make me spank you, LT.”  
“Christ, Brad, how many fucking times do I have to ask you to call me Nate when we’re in bed?”

Brad rolled one shoulder in a lazy shrug and dipped his head, pressing a trio of soft kisses into the hollow of Nate’s thread.

“How many times have I got to tell you how pretty you are when you’re pissed?”

Nate fell back against the pillow, grinning, glowing. He looked much, much younger when he smiled like that. Brad had gotten so used to Nate in his Kevlar, sanded into shape by desert winds, hard and unforgiving. You had to be unforgiving in a place like Iraq. The desert had a long memory. It never paid to be caught out.

Still, you could turn back time, a little, in a wide, white bed.  
Maybe, you could try.

“Are you hungry?”

Flat on his back in rumpled sheets, Nate shook his head. The smile was still there, still tugging at the corner of his mouth. He curled both arms around Brad's neck, drawing him down for another, slower kiss. They lingered, tips of tongues touching. Brad sank into the kiss and, just for a little while, he let himself pretend that they had all the time in the world.

*

“You’re kidding me.”

Helmet in hand, leather zipped halfway up his chest, Brad raised an eyebrow.

“Nate, I never, _ever_ joke about my bike. Believe me. I love this bike.”

Standing there in jeans and a plain white t-shirt, his hair still sleep ruffled and almost reddish in the sunlight, Nate smiled. Back at his parents house, there were things hanging in the garden, things made out of glass and wire, designed to catch the light. Standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, Nate caught the light, trapped it, refracted it and shone.

“I’m not getting on that thing, Brad.”

Brad shrugged both shoulders, sweating in his leather, already longing for the breeze.

“Never took you for a pussy, Nate. That’s all.”

Nate folded both arms across his chest, and there was a look that Brad had seen before, a desert look. Brad can almost see the washed out blues and beiges reflected in Nate’s eyes.

“You didn’t call me a pussy last night.”  
“Get on the bike, Nate.”  
“When I was fucking you, I mean.”  
“Get. On. The bike.”

One of Nate’s eyebrows twitched and Brad’s smile broadened into a grin.

“Please?”

Nate reached out for the spare helmet, holding it loosely in one hand.

“If I survived that cluster-fuck in Mesopotamia just to die in a fireball on the fucking 101, I’ll…”

Brad swung his leg over the bike, kicking up the stand and taking the weight of it. It was something he got used to. Nate got onto the bike behind him and the weight changed and Brad felt it right between his legs.

“I can’t remember the last time I crashed this bike.”

One long scar on the side of his body, just above his jeans when he’d come off his bike and rolled and hadn’t died.

Proof of life, then. Something like that.

Out of town, between the hills and the sea, the road went on and on for ever. Brad knew this stretch of road like the back of his hand but, with Nate's arms around him, it felt like a whole different country. It took Odysseys fifteen years to come home again. Brad was only in the desert for three weeks, but it felt like he’d been away for long enough that it was like returning to a whole other country with Nate’s arms around his waist. A clean country. A green country.

No desert.

The ocean, that day, was that particular hurting blue, bright, vibrant; an exact match for the sky. Sometimes, in the desert, he’d turned around, shaded his eyes and expected to see the sea. Never there, though. He was a million miles from home. He was adrift, on an ocean of sand. Odysseys…Ulysses…who-the-fuck-ever, he wandered for fifteen years, but there was a goddess and a Cyclops and his men turned into fucking pigs. Brad had been adrift in the desert in a fucking Humvee. No romance, but he knew where his heart was all along.

He’d learned not to think about this in terms of ‘love’, which didn’t mean he always managed it. That he didn’t sometimes slip.

He imagined that exact same blue catching and reflecting in Nate’s eyes.

Fuck it. The bike was quick and the breeze was good. The ocean hummed blue and Brad could feel Nate pressed against his back, all the way down. Strange things came back to him; a glimpse of Nate changing his shirt in the shade of a Humvee…The taste of that hooch Ray had scared up, right at the end…The fact that Nate couldn’t carry on a tune if he tried.

Brad laughed and the wind took it.

They were following the old 101, past Oceanside and down towards Mexico. Brad hated Mexico, but, in all fairness, his experience of it was Tijuana as a teenager. Beyond that, beyond cheap tequila and the scent of vomit, there must have been another country, a green country, an old country. Doc Bryan, sleep deprived and uncharacteristically wistful, had sat with his back against a Humvee and he’d told Brad about how the barren fucking desert that they’d been sitting in had once between the garden of fucking Eden. If Brad had believed in God, he might have thought that He’d razed it to the ground, that whole country, just to keep that secret safe.

It seemed like Brad thought more and more about coming to another country when he knew that Nate was leaving.

Lost in those thoughts, it almost took him by surprise; it always seemed to take longer when he was alone. It wasn’t much; a place where the coast tucked in a little, scrubby grass, a little shack of a house, more a shed, built facing the sea. Just a little place that nobody knew about; somewhere to keep his boards…somewhere to lie down and sleep when he came out of the ocean. It wasn’t much. It was all that he’d ever wanted except for being a Marine.

Just a little corner of the world to come back to that nobody knew about but him.

Behind him, still on the bike, Nate was staring, the helmet hanging from his hand. Used to Harvard Square, three stops on the T from Davis, coffee and a vegan sandwich in the Diesel Café, flirting with the girl behind the counter, the one with the piercings and the blue velvet ribbons twisted through her dreadlocked hair.

Brad knew these things because Nate talked about them. Nate talked about them because Brad wanted to know where he came from, now. He wanted to know what he knew.

“What’s this?” said Nate, his chin leaning on Brad’s shoulder. Riding the bike was hard if you weren’t used to it. Brad knew that. He reached back one hand, sliding it up the length of Nate’s thigh and squeezing.

“My place,” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

As they walk towards the hut, Brad reached out and hooked one finger through Nate’s. He did that, but it was Nate who took his hand. It was one of those things that happened and neither of them really thought about it. It was one of those things that they allowed to happen, to make it easier on both of them, while it was happening.

Brad was almost embarrassed, when he opened the door. It was perfectly fine when he was on his own, but it wasn’t exactly designed for company. There was a futon on the floor. Boards leading up against the wall. A pair of ratty sneakers discarded in one corner. Still, the light was good, pouring in through the windows. The sheets were clean. Nate’s fingers tightened around his.

He didn’t say anything. He just turned and kissed Brad, while his back was still to the sea. They were still holding hands and, dimly, it occurred to Brad that it had always felt like heaven here before because this was always going to happen here.

Myths mean something, which is why they’re always showing up, over and over again.  
Like Ulysses, always looking for a familiar shore.

Brad drew Nate inside with him, both hands fisting in his shirt. The door swung shut behind them and Brad was already shoving Nate’s shirt up. Second time today he’d seen that perfect skin. In Boston, Nate had tanned where his shirt didn’t touch. Brad bent his head and kissed paler skin. Nate made a soft sound, part moan, part laugh, his head rolling back. The sun slanted across his back, bare as Brad shoved his shirt up, yanked it over his head and let it drop to the floor. He was already starting on Nate’s jeans.

Nate laughed.

“What? You’re just going to strip me and keep your own pants intact? That what’s happening here, Brad?”

“It’s a start.”

He shoved Nate in the direction of the bed and Nate shoved back, both of them grinning, already breathless. It was amazing how quickly everything came back; how they remembered how to touch each other, remembered how to draw out little sounds, gasps and moans. Brad dragged his own shirt over his head and Nate was pulling him down onto the bed with both hands on his hips. Brad went down smooth, on top of Nate, bare chest to bare chest. Nate’s knees were bent, his hips pushing up, and Brad could feel his dick hard against him. That morning, so early that the light was still grey, Brad had squirmed down in the bed and trailed his tongue against the underside of Nate’s hard-on until he trembled. He’d gone slow, his fingers curled around his own dick, and then, once they’d both come, they’d fallen asleep again, Brad’s head resting on Nate’s belly.

Now, Nate pushed his hand inside Brad’s open jeans and cupped his dick through white cotton, the tips of his fingers pressing gently against Brad’s balls. Brad groaned softly, pushing up onto his hands, rocking down against Nate’s palm.

“Fuck me.”

Brad blinked. It wasn’t that he hadn’t fucked Nate before, but it was something that just happened, just like Nate fucking him. They never planned ahead. Marines had every inch of their lives planned for them and yet they never fucking knew what was going on. Brad had this dizzy sense of his head spinning as he bent his head and sucked at Nate’s lips. The sheets smelt faintly of detergent and saltwater. Nate’s skin tasted of sun and soap and the road.

Brad straightened up, yanking at Nate’s jeans, dragging underwear down with them, stripping Nate naked. Brad had seen Nate’s apartment in Boston; seen pajama pants hanging at the foot of the bed. In California, Nate slept naked and so did Brad. They kicked off jeans and Brad trailed one hand up Nate’s thigh again, now bare, his fingertips stirring fine hairs.

He always felt like he was trying to remember every detail.  
He already knew. He’d committed Nate’s body to memory like a map.

There was lube in the drawer at the side of the bed and Nate took it out of Brad’s hands and spread it over both of their fingers. He curled his fingers around Brad’s dick, stroking slowly, teasing. When Brad pushed one finger inside him, Nate’s mouth flickered into a smile. He stretched, his back arching and Brad pressed another finger inside him. The fingers of Nate’s free hand brushed against Brad’s mouth and Brad parted his lips, trailing his tongue against the pad of Nate’s finger. Brad didn’t know if it was possible that six billion people could be alive on the planet and nowhere was a single finger print repeated, but he did know that the little sound Nate made when he sucked on his finger was pretty damn close to perfect. He shifted between Nate’s legs, the sun slanting across his back, warming his skin. If he listened, he could hear the ocean. The hitch of Nate’s breathing made a counterpoint.

For a moment, pressed inside Nate, Nate’s legs wrapped up around him, Brad couldn’t move. He just stayed there, catching his breath, finding his centre again. When he opened his eyes, Nate was looking up at him, blue eyes clear and wide open.

“I said I wanted you to fuck me, Brad.”

He said it almost gently, one hand cupping the side of Brad’s face, thumb smudging against his cheekbone. Brad felt lube slick on his skin and he bent his head to kiss the corner of Nate’s mouth.

“Anybody ever tell you that you’re an impatient bitch, Nate?”

Nate grins, back arching as Brad finally started to move, fucking him in long, slow strokes, taking his time, making the most of what they had left.

“Don’t make me spank you, Sergeant.”  
“Sounds familiar.”

They were quiet after that. With an arm curled on either side of Nate’s head, Brad kissed him slow and deep, pressing his tongue deep into his mouth. Nate pushed back against him. One heel pressed into the mattress, giving him purchase to push up against Brad, move under him. Brad found that he couldn’t have spoken if he wanted to. He could barely breathe. He groaned softly, pushing deep into Nate, groping to hitch Nate’s leg higher on his hip so that he could get that little bit deeper. Nate moaned loudly, the column of his throat making a perfect line as he arched.

Brad clearly remembered the moment that he realised that Nate was that loud in bed. Sometimes you just got lucky.

Sometimes, after all of your struggle, all of your wandering in the fucking wilderness, you got given something back.

Supporting his weight on one hand, Brad fumbled between them. His fingers covered Nate’s, laced with them. His eyes fixed on Nate’s face, he kept their fingers moving quickly, skin sliding easily against slippery skin. That smile was back, tugging at the corner of Nate’s mouth. Brad felt his own mouth mirroring it.

“You’re fucking beautiful,” he mumbled. Every time with Nate, _every time_ , it was like he forgot how to speak. He had to learn it all over again.

He felt like it ought to last forever, like he ought to be able to make it last, for him, for Nate, for both of them. He wanted to, but it was already slipping away from them. His breathing hitched at the same time as his hips, his fingers tightening over Nate’s. Nate nodded, swallowing hard, his pulse trembling in his throat. Brad wanted this so desperately. He wanted to keep doing this forever.

Some things just don’t happen for you, in the end.  
You made do with what you got.

After he came, Brad kept his hand moving, kept Brad’s moving with him until Nate groaned softly and came. He was wound so tight, so arched, so beautiful that it took him a long moment to relax. He lay still with his eyes closed and Brad lay beside him, one hand still resting against the sticky skin of Nate’s belly.

He felt Nate laugh rather than heard it.

“What?”  
“I can’t believe you actually had lube at your fucking _beach shack_.”

Staring at the ceiling, Brad felt himself start to grin.  
He’d known all along that he was going to bring Nate here.

He turned his head and Nate was already waiting to kiss him and nobody was flinching away this time. Side by side, naked on the futon, they both laughed and, all the time, the sound of the ocean. He’d grown up loving the ocean, and, right then, he could feel his heart thudding in his chest with all of it.

Fuck the rules. Fuck not thinking about it in terms of ‘love’. Ulysses…Odysseys…he was at drift on the ocean for fifteen years. Right then, lying there, his bare arm pressed against Nate’s, Brad felt like he had come into a cool, calm harbour, sheltered, after a long time looking for a sea to sail home on.

Twelve hours until morning.  
Home, for the moment, Brad closed his eyes and rested.

Nate shifted, rested his head on Brad’s shoulder. Brad felt him closing his eyes by the brush of his eyelashes. He wrapped one arm around him, hand resting against his shoulder. He shifted his weight, the sun shining on his belly, catching Nate across the hip.

“What do you know the Odyssey?” said Brad, finally. Nate shifted, his lips forming a lazy kiss against Brad’s skin, brushing the fine hairs around his nipple.

“I read it in A.P English. Why?”

“Tell me about it.”

Nate shifts again, his whole cheek pressed against Brad’s skin now. His hand moved, tracing odd roads across his belly, dipping into his navel.

“Well,” he said, voice lower enough that Brad could still hear the waves. “It starts with a war and a wine dark sea...”

Sounds familiar.


End file.
